#castle fire

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

Scientists have known last year's Castle Fire was probably the most destructive for California's famously fire-resilient sequoias in at least 700 years, but a draft National Park Service report obtained by the Visalia Times-Delta puts a quantitative measurement on that fire's climate-fueled toll.

Between 7,500 and 10,000 monarch sequoias — about 10% to 14% of the world's mature sequoia population — perished in the fire. "I cannot overemphasize how mind-blowing this is for all of us. These trees have lived for thousands of years. They've survived dozens of wildfires already," Christy Brigham, chief of Resources Management and Science at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, told the Times-Delta.

The Castle Fire burned through portions of giant sequoia groves on the western slopes of California's Sierra Nevada mountains, the only place on the planet where they naturally grow. Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.

Kristen Shive, science director for the Save the Redwoods League, stands in the Alder Creek Grove, where some sequoias didn’t survive California’s Castle fire. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Excerpt from this LA Times story:

Kristen Shive glanced around the blackened forest and started counting.

She stopped at 13 — the number of giant sequoias she spotted with charred trunks, scorched crowns and broken limbs.

The towering trees had grown on this Sierra Nevada ridge top for well over 500 years. They had lived through many wildfires and droughts. But they could not survive the Castle fire, which swept into the Alder Creek Grove in the early hours of Sept. 13.

One of the monster wildfires birthed by California’s August lightning blitz, the Castle fire burned through portions of roughly 20 giant sequoia groves on the western slopes of the Sierra, the only place on the planet they naturally grow.

Sequoia experts may never know how many of the world’s most massive trees died in the Castle fire, but judging by what they have seen so far, they say the number is certainly in the hundreds — and could easily top 1,000.

“This fire could have put a noticeable dent in the world’s supply of big sequoias,” said Nate Stephenson, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Castle fire is just the latest in a string of wildfires since 2015 that have fried monarch sequoias — trees that nature designed to not only withstand fire but thrive with it.

The problem is that the wildfires chewing through sequoia groves these days are not the kind that the long-lived giants evolved with.